Madrid Revives Mandatory Mask Order As ‘Second Wave’ Worsens; Beijing Confirms 1st New COVID-19 Case In Weeks: Live Updates

Summary:

• Bill Gates sits for interview on CNBC
• Sun Belt states see promising pull back
• China reports 1st case in Beijing in 3 weeks
• Head of China’s CDC takes experimental vaccine
• WHO warns COVID-19 isn’t going to be “seasonal” like the flu
• Germany joins list of European countries warning on travel to Spain
• Tokyo suffers another 270 cases
• Vietnam makes mask-wearing mandatory again
• Madrid tightens virus restrictions amid resurgence fears

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Bill Gates on Tuesday morning sat for an interview with the Squawk Box team where he assured all viewers that skepticism about the safety of the coronavirus vaccine candidates had been greatly exaggerated. Once the FDA has slapped its imprimatur on a candidate, Americans and others shouldn’t hesitate to accept the final product.

Gates’s interview follows a slew of vaccine-related news. Taken together, the intended message is clear: With the bilateral relationship unraveling and US economic fundamentals continuing to deteriorate, vaccine-related headlines are the market’s last hope for survival. It follows news from yesterday about Moderna’s vaccine candidate, which is entering its Phase 3 trial.

During his interview on Tuesday, Gates praised the “low-cost” vaccines from AstraZeneca and Moderna…and seemingly dismissed concerns about safety and side-effects out of hand.

“The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a particulary good, low-cost vaccine. The AstraZeneca and Moderna are two of the first to get out there,” says @BillGates on what companies are winning the race for the #COVID19 vaccine. pic.twitter.com/MFqGCF1Z4d

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) July 28, 2020

Yesterday, the worst-hit Sun Belt states showed promising signs that infections are slowing. Meanwhile, in China, the number of new cases confirmed daily has continued to creep higher as more cases were confirmed on Tuesday.

Beijing on Tuesday reported one new coronavirus case, its first in 21 days. The new case was confirmed just days after Beijing started reopening more public transit and lifting other restrictions inspired by the outbreak. The case was just 1 of 68 reported Tuesday across the mainland.

With anxieties on the rise, the head of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention surprised his audience by revealing that he had been injected with an experimental coronavirus vaccine. The talk, according to the AP, was intended to show the Chinese people that there’s nothing wrong with taking such a vaccine.

“I’m going to reveal something undercover: I am injected with one of the vaccines,” Gao Fu said in a webinar Sunday hosted by Alibaba Health, an arm of the Chinese e-commerce giant, and Cell Press, an American publisher of scientific journals. “I hope it will work.”

Suffering its own “third wave” outbreak, Hong Kong is considering postponing its upcoming legislative elections, according to local press reports, as a resurgence of new cases over the last 2 weeks has rattled Hong Kong society. Authorities reported 98 local infections on Tuesday, a slight ebb after the city found more than 100 local cases for six consecutive days. The city’s contact tracers have had trouble tracing the origins of new infections.

As the outbreak worsens, HK is imposing its most restrictive social distancing measures yet.

Elsewhere in Asia, Vietnam and its provinces are imposing mandatory mask-wearing orders after an unexpected surge in community infections stemming from an outbreak in Danang (reported 11 new cases yesterday). The province has put about 7,000 people in quarantine for 14 days. Over the past three days, the region has reported 15 new cases. Vietnam had all but claimed victory over the virus, having gone almost 100 days without even a single new local patient.

In Tokyo, officials confirmed about 270 new cases of the virus on Tuesday, Nikkei reported, citing an unidentified person. That’s more than twice the 131 cases the Japanese capital found Monday. The city has reported more than 100 new daily cases for weeks as it faces a renewed resurgence.

Finally, moving over to the Asia-Pacific region, Victoria reported another 384 cases and six deaths over the past 24 hours, and said that it will suspend all but the most urgent elective surgeries. As the outbreak in its second-most populous state intensifies, Australia is sending a medical team to help Papua New Guinea confront an alarming surge in cases, according to Canberra’s Acting Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Birmingham. The small Pacific island state had 62 cases as of Tuesday, up from just eight 11 days ago.

All the while, worries about a second wave have intensified across Europe.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez responded angrily to the UK after Britain ratcheted up its travel restrictions to include a popular set of Spanish islands, and mandated quarantines for all travelers visiting the UK from Spain.

“The decision is unbalanced,” Sanchez said about these new restrictions. The Balearic and Canary Islands “have a lower incidence of the virus than is being registered right now” in Britain, Sanchez said.

Speaking to the BBC, Local Government Minister Simon Clarke said “we respectfully disagree with the Spanish government…You do have to make decisions on a country-wide basis. There is going to be internal transfer within Spain.”

Globally, cases have reached 16,409,902, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Source: Worldometer

This comes just after the worldwide death toll topped 650k to 652,531.

Source: Worldometer

The WHO has warned against complacency over coronavirus transmissions in the northern hemisphere, saying that the virus does not behave like influenza, which typically follows a set “flu season”.

Adding to the growing number of European countries that have advised their citizens to avoid travel to Spain, Germany on Tuesday urged travelers to avoid Catalonia and Barcelona over fears they might contract the virus.

As was widely expected, the biggest COVID-19 vaccine trial in the world got under way on Monday with the first of 30,000 volunteers for Moderna’s major ‘Stage 3’ trial which is being run in cooperation with the US government.

While Spain denounced the new travel restrictions that will put the final nail in the coffin of the 2020 peak tourism season, the regional government in Madrid has just made the wearing of face masks mandatory in all public areas, while limiting the number of people allowed to gather in a given space to ten.

Finally, Iran has reported 235 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, a record single-day toll for the Islamic Republic, which has the highest death toll in the Middle East.